Bear Twin Lakes - Backpacking - Fishing

Great pics of a beautiful place. I live on the East Coast, so the odds of me actually hiking the John Muir trail are very slim; I'll just have to live vicariously through you.
 
great pics nick. I love that area. it's been a long time. what were you using in the creeks to fish? (if you say a fishing pole you are off the christmas list. lol) what tent is that? is that the same one you used at big basin?
 
BOOMSTICK said:
great pics nick. I love that area. it's been a long time. what were you using in the creeks to fish? (if you say a fishing pole you are off the christmas list. lol) what tent is that? is that the same one you used at big basin?
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Thanks buddy.

I was using a fishing rod...
...AND a red humpy (or goofus bug).:D The fish in the lakes were literally jumping out of the water to get it. The creek fish were a little more finicky, but once I got the right drift, they were all over it.
Yeah, that's the same tent, the one we didn't bother to learn how to set up before we got caught in that rain storm...:rolleyes: Been trying to convince Kathryn to let me buy an SMD Haven, but she won't let me spare the $350. I'm gonna have to start doing like you and start embezzling from myself. Wait, Fish doesn't read this forum does she? :confused:

j williams said:
Yeah thats the same as mine, just longer when taken down Mines a bit over a foot.....

Thanks brotha. :thumbup:
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a foot? Sawet!
 
Sounds like a great trip! We'll have to enroll you in a map-reading course....

That brookie looks nice, when we were there in 2004 that would have been one of the smaller ones. We were catching them on almost every cast. And at the middle-sized lake (most westerly) we were catching them by dangling the lure above the water, and they would jump out of the water to take the lure. We caught a mix of brook and rainbow there, and in Bear Creek itself we caught a bunch of Golden trout. The Goldens were really good tasting, pink fleshed like salmon.

How were the mosquitoes? It has been a horrible mosquito season this year, but this late in the season they may have been tolerable.
 
lambertiana said:
Sounds like a great trip! We'll have to enroll you in a map-reading course....

That brookie looks nice, when we were there in 2004 that would have been one of the smaller ones. We were catching them on almost every cast. And at the middle-sized lake (most westerly) we were catching them by dangling the lure above the water, and they would jump out of the water to take the lure. We caught a mix of brook and rainbow there, and in Bear Creek itself we caught a bunch of Golden trout. The Goldens were really good tasting, pink fleshed like salmon.

How were the mosquitoes? It has been a horrible mosquito season this year, but this late in the season they may have been tolerable.
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Hey, thanks again for telling me about this one! It was awesome!

Yeah, guess I'm gonna have to take that course. Stupid elevation lines... It looked like such a good route except for those 3 lines. So am I right in assuming the right way to go is up that creek/drainage valley before you get on the John Muir trail?

We camped on the easterly one, and the fish were a bit bigger there. The fish in the pic wasn't the largest but was about average. The fish in the westerly lake were really small, but we didn't spend that much time there. Neither of them were quite so eager to jump out of the water to get a lure though, and no rainbows showed up.

Man, catching a golden was one of my goals, but I didn't pull anything out of the creek but a couple of brookies. I'm gonna have to get more details on were to find the goldens!

The mosquitoes weren't bad at all, maybe a handful of bites, but they disappeared once the fire got going.

C Bryant said:
Sooooo jealous! Awesome pics
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Don't be jealous, I'll send you an invite next time if you're in to backpacking at all.
 
Super photos, great scenery there! Thanks for the little mental vacation :thumbup:
 
I haven't been up there in well over a decade. Not much of a trail as I recall.

There used to be a lot of lilly pad type vegetation on the lake. If you tossed a lure on to a pad and slowly pulled it off in to the water, it would often get hit.

Funny story: I once took a couple up to Bear Twin who were very fit hikers. The guy was a triathlete. Unfortunately, the guy had rented a REI backpack for his wife without trying it on her. It was WAY too large for her hips so the belt did not work. All the weight was hanging on her shoulders. Needless to say, she fatigued rapidly. He ended up carrying his pack up the hill from the main trail, then going back for her pack. He was so whipped he just collapsed into his tent without any fishing, dinner, etc. It was a good lesson on the importance of pack fit.

DancesWithKnives
 
kodeboswachter said:
wow that looks really great, hope to do it myself some day.

Were there any bears or wolves?
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We didn't see any, but we did see signs of bear. Well, that's what that last picture was all about. As far as I know there aren't any wolves in California, at least not in any numbers that you are likely to see one.

DWK2 said:
I haven't been up there in well over a decade. Not much of a trail as I recall.

There used to be a lot of lilly pad type vegetation on the lake. If you tossed a lure on to a pad and slowly pulled it off in to the water, it would often get hit.

Funny story: I once took a couple up to Bear Twin who were very fit hikers. The guy was a triathlete. Unfortunately, the guy had rented a REI backpack for his wife without trying it on her. It was WAY too large for her hips so the belt did not work. All the weight was hanging on her shoulders. Needless to say, she fatigued rapidly. He ended up carrying his pack up the hill from the main trail, then going back for her pack. He was so whipped he just collapsed into his tent without any fishing, dinner, etc. It was a good lesson on the importance of pack fit.

DancesWithKnives
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Yep, all my catches were near lilly pads.

That's actually a good story to copy and past whenever someone asks about packs. Lesson learned the hard way, bummer.
 
We were camping on Bear Creek a little upstream, just below Hilgard Creek, so we would just go straight up the slope from Bear Creek. A lot of that slope is quite steep, but we found a chute that wasn't too bad.
 
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